President Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden Tuesday to announce an executive order aimed at reforming some police procedures in response to the national outcry over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.
But even as he was speaking, Trump made it crystal clear that he viewed the order as a necessary bit of political box-checking rather than a necessary first step in changing the way members of law enforcement treat black Americans.
In fact, Trump spent most of his time defending police officers – insisting it was a “tiny” amount who are responsible for incidents like the one involving Floyd – and arguing that the American public really wants law and order.
“Some of them don’t even know that’s what they want, but it’s what they want,” said Trump.
He went on to blame former President Barack Obama for not getting police reform done sooner, touted the economic recovery – based on retail sales numbers released Tuesday morning – and talked about how school choice is “the civil rights of all time in this country.”
Just in case you missed how incredibly tepid Trump was on the executive order – and the broader effort to address the unequal treatment of black people by law enforcement – all you need to do is read the order itself.
As CBS’ Weijia Jiang noted, the order doesn’t use the word “racism” or “bias.” Instead, it put the situation this way:
“Unfortunately, there have been instances in which some officers have misused their authority, challenging the trust of the American people, with tragic consequences for individual victims, their communities, and our Nation.”
This stance is generally in keeping with Trump’s response to the protests following Floyd’s death. He has worked to blame the (largely peaceful) protests on Antifa and other professional troublemakers. And he defended the police at every turn.
“Our police have been letting us live in peace and we want to make sure we don’t have any bad actors in there and sometimes we’ll see some horrible things like we witnessed recently, but I say 99.9 – let’s go with 99% of them – great, great people and they’ve done jobs that are record setting,” Trump said earlier this month.
Put plainly: The President doesn’t really think the police need to be reformed. He views Floyd’s death as unfortunate but not indicative of any sort of broader racial bias in policing.
The Point: That view may play to Trump’s base. But it’s hard to see suburban women, who have left Trump in droves since 2016, being brought back to his side as long as he continues to stake out ground like this.
